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Research Software Engineers look to the future at first ever conference | 29/09/2016

Improving software for research and raising the profile of the people behind it were the themes of the first conference of Research Software Engineers, held in Manchester in September.

CCFE's Alys Brett was on the organising committee and there was further representation from Culham with Shaun de Witt and Jonathan Hollocombe leading workshops and talks at the event.

Alys told us: “Research Software Engineers (RSEs) are the people who work in research but focus on software rather than papers. They care about both good research and good software. Many will not have ‘software engineer' in their job title - it's an inclusive definition that covers a whole spectrum of activities. At Culham we have lots of people doing RSE-like work, from physicists working on modelling or data analysis to software engineers building experiment control-systems or data tools.

“There have been scientific programmers for a long time but new models of working are emerging with the rise of RSE groups in Universities, more programming in non-scientific disciplines and the inclusion of RSEs in grant applications. There is increasing recognition amongst research organisations and funding bodies of the vital role of software in modern research and the benefits of having RSEs who can work as fully-invested partners on research projects.”

Alys will be instrumental in keeping the momentum going after being confirmed as joint-chair of the UK Research Software Engineers Association at the conference.

“The conference gave an overwhelming impression of many smart and useful people finding their community,” she continues. “It was also heartening to have so many participants from outside the UK expressing enthusiasm for what we're doing and aiming to set up similar associations elsewhere in the world.

“I'm delighted to be taking on the role at this exciting time. The new committee are keen to build on the great progress that's already been made and to harness this injection of enthusiasm so that research can benefit from better software.”

Over 200 people from 14 different countries attended the event at Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry, cementing the RSE knowledge-sharing networks that have already formed in the UK and internationally. Workshops ranged from technical sessions on modern tools such as Docker, to sessions on programming techniques such as task-based parallelism, to discussions on shaping the role of the RSE and how to be a happy RSE! Keynote talks were given by Matthew Johnson of Microsoft Research in Cambridge and by Susan Halford of the University of Southampton. RSE17 is already planned for 7-8 September 2017 at the same venue.

A flavour of the conference's atmosphere and range of topics comes from the blog post and Twitter summary below.